Sorry to repeat myself, but like I wrote in my previous post the default
chat client for Fedora Workstation needs much better Office 365 and Lync
integration:
Most organizations and academic institutions are migrating to Office 365 as
they reduce their in-house physical server count, consolidate
licenses and
go "to the cloud". These same organizations also have a large inventory of
existing Windows desktops that could be turned into Fedora Workstations
instead of taking the expensive route of buying Macs. There's a huge
potential WIN here to provide major cost-savings to organizations and
provide a cutting-edge Linux environment that will beat the poorly
implement UNIX-like environment of Mac OS X.
2. Empathy/Pidgin currently doesn't support enough features from Lync (now
Skype for Business) [1] - the Microsoft enterprise communication tool - and
that's a show stopper. You can't do video calls, you can't initiate
meetings and you can't do screen-sharing or file-transfers.
The real problem is integration with enterprise services and that's the
big challenge ahead for Workstation.
According to the WG product description for Fedora Workstation you want to
target university, enterprise (corporate) and tech-companies and that
pretty much comprises 90% of the users you want to attract. Most users in
the real world (corporate, university or tech-company) use Google Hangouts,
Skype or Lync (now Skype for Business) and in some cases just plain IRC.
For meetings there's typically Goto Meeting which currently has no Linux
client.
[1]
http://next.skypeforbusiness.com/
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Ananda Samaddar <ananda.samaddar(a)zoho.com>
wrote:
On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:18:29 -0400 (EDT)
Jiri Eischmann <jeischma(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ananda Samaddar" <ananda.samaddar(a)zoho.com>
> To: desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 7:29:20 PM
> Subject: Re: Re: Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation
>
> I'm a bit concerned about the enthusiasm for Telegram. The clients
> may be FOSS but the server software isn't. In addition to this the
> use of a central server is troubling with respect to metadata
> collection.
>
> Has anyone considered Tox? It's a FOSS replacement for Skype and
> doesn't rely on a central server. It's still in a pre-alpha state but
> has several working clients. I've tested qTox and it works nicely
> with sound and video through a firewall. There was a Gtk client
> (Venom) but it's deprecated.
>
> A large project like Fedora being interested in Tox could make all the
> difference and increase traction to help move it towards a stable and
> feature complete release. I've noticed several people mentioning OTR.
> Tox has encryption built in.
>
> I could go on about it but the information is on their website and the
> code is available for perusal.
>
> Ananda
>
> Tox was also mentioned by several users, but the number was much
> smaller compared to Telegram. There is a Tox repository available in
> Copr BTW:
https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/gnikandrov/tox-im/
>
> The server part of Telegram is closed source, but they've promised to
> open source it when it's ready. The API/protocol is open, existing
> clients are open, the server side is promised to be open in near
> future. I don't think Telegram scores badly in terms of openness.
> What they're not planning is an infrastructure of independent servers
> though.
>
> Jiri
Therein lies the biggest issues with Telegram: it depends on proprietary
server code and also federation is not planned. I consider these to be
significant problems. Telegram 'promising' to release the code to
their server is not good enough in my opinion. I hate to go
Stallman (although I have the utmost respect for RMS) on you but
Telegram users are still tied to the perceived and/or actual benevolence
of the server vendor.
Tox is already p2p and cross platform. The only cross platfrom FOSS
voip application that springs to mind is Jitsi. Tox works through a
firewall; both my machines have the default firewall settings from the
netinstall iso, i.e. fairly restrictive.
If popularity is an important criterion then surely Skype would be top
of the list for inclusion in Fedora and Gnome. For reasons too obvious
to state that won't and shouldn't happen. There appears to be a
chicken-egg scenario here unfortunately with regards to Tox.
Ananda
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